Week 8 – Reading Topics

CHAPTER 17 THE LAW OF PRIORITIES To Your Life 

1. Are you prepared to really shake up your life and get out of your comfort zone in order to live and work according to your priorities? Is there something in your life that is working so poorly that you intuitively know it will require a major revision in how you do things? What is that some-thing? Describe how it is not working. Describe why it is not working. Can you think outside the box (or create a new box) to solve the issue and realign your priorities? Ignoring a major alignment problem in your priorities is like lining up a golf shot incorrectly. The farther you hit the ball, the more off course it will be; the longer you live out of alignment, the greater the chance you will miss achieving your vision.

2.If you have never done so before, take the time to write out your answers to the three R questions (Be sure to include family and other responsibilities, not just career.):

What is required of me?

What gives the greatest return?

What brings the greatest reward?

Once you have answered those three questions, create a list of the things you are doing that don’t fit solidly into one of the three Rs. You need to delegate or eliminate these things.

CHAPTER 18 THE LAW OF SACRIFICE To Your Life

1.To become a more influential leader, are you willing to make sacrifices? Are you willing to give up your rights for the sake of the people you lead? Give it some thought. Then create two lists: (1) the things you are willing to give up in order to go up, and (2) the things you are not willing to sacrifice to advance. Be sure to consider which list will contain items such as your health, marriage, relationships with children, finances, and so on.

2.Living by the Law of Sacrifice usually means being willing to trade something of value that you possess to gain something more valuable that you don’t. King gave up many personal freedoms to gain freedoms for others. Rice gave up prestige and influence at Stanford to gain influence and impact around the world. In order to make such sacrificial trades, an individual must have something of value to trade. What do you have to offer? And what are you currently willing to trade your time, energy, and resources for that may give you greater personal worth?

CHAPTER 19 THE LAW OF TIMING To Your Life 

It has been said that managers do things right while leaders do the right things. The Law of Timing says that leaders do more than that: they do the right things at the right time. In your approach to leadership, does timing play an important part in your strategy? Do you think about the appropriateness of the timing as much as you do the rightness of the action? Review the major actions you’ve initiated in the recent past, and discern how much attention you’ve given to timing.

CHAPTER 20 THE LAW OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH To Your Life 

1.In which stage of the leadership development process do you currently find yourself?

Stage 1: Developing yourself

Stage 2: Developing your team

Stage 3: Developing leaders

To validate your answer, cite specific actions you have taken to develop yourself, to develop a team, and to help specific individuals improve their leadership ability. If you haven’t begun to develop leaders, try to identify reasons why. Are you someone who needs to be needed, focuses on the bottom 20 percent, tries to treat everyone the same, or isn’t strategic about investing in others? If you aren’t developing leaders, identify what steps you must take to get started.

2.What are you doing to gather and hold leaders? Are you becoming a better leader so that leaders will want to follow you? Are you trying to create an environment where leaders can thrive and succeed? Are you giving leaders freedom to lead and be innovative? Are you clearing away red tape? Are you providing them with resources and greater responsibilities? Are you praising risk and rewarding success?

CHAPTER 21 THE LAW OF LEGACY To Your Life 

What do you want your legacy to be? If you are early in your Leadership journey, I wouldn’t expect you to have the definitive answer to that question yet. However, I still think there is value in your considering what you want your life to stand for.

Take some time to consider the big picture concerning why you lead. This will not be a quick process. The idea of legacy is closely related to a person’s sense of purpose in life. Why are you here? What gifts and skills do you possess that relate to your highest potential as a human being? What unique opportunities do you possess based on your personal circumstances and what’s happening in the world around you? Who might you be able to impact and what might you be able to accomplish as a leader in your lifetime?